When Cal awoke the next day to a pounding head, he deeply regretted the follies the younger him had partaken in yesterday and spent the morning swearing he’d never let another drop of alcohol pass his lips within his lifetime (it didn’t occur to him how in this moment he had become an exact reflection of the captain of the Riversdale Guard Force).

The only glimmer of light in this darkness came when he discovered the grateful gambler’s gift on the table: a deep blue gambeson lined inside with mail, matching padded trousers, and steel-toed boots, all brand new and high quality. Alongside them on the table rested a pouch of thirty silvers that, when jingled, produced the sweetest of salves for the anguished mind.

He equipped himself, strapped the longsword to his belt, and put on his backpack; finally the man in the mirror looked like a warrior, and he felt an electrifying sense of power trickle down his fingertips. Before departing from Fragrant Grove, Cal made sure to visit the gambler and give his thanks, as well as drop by Boris and gift the beggar four silvers in the hopes it would help turn his life around.

Cal planned to head to Cliquee Cove as the butcher’s niece had suggested he do, though not necessarily to earn riches but because his mum had mentioned his dad being an adventurer. Given locating his absent dad had been one of his reasons for setting out in the first place, any information the Adventurer’s Guild had on said deadbeat would be valuable leads for Cal to follow up on.

On the topic of the Adventurer’s Guild, Cal went to the guards quarters to hand over his cudgel seeing as he no longer had a use for it, and as Rory had foretold, Cal found no sign of the missing guard while there.

When the head guard heard about what had happened, he apologised for Loafer Lucas’s behaviour and said he’d have the slacker reprimanded, besides this confirming that the mission request was indeed legitimate and that they would be immensely grateful if Cal could handle it; even without their gratitude, the completion reward alone of twenty silvers made it a tempting prospect.

Penbrooke hadn’t left any directions behind before departing, but Cal figured the knight too would be happy about heading to Cliquee Cove given it was the only town in the region, and therefore fit the knight’s temperament of preferring more attention over less.

Moving north towards the town, Cal had reached the outer edges of Fragrant Grove when he spotted someone unexpected ahead. Wearing his golden floral crown but otherwise dressed as usual, the mayor waited by the crossroads; meeting Cal’s gaze, he crooked his finger to prompt the younger man forwards.

Something feels off here; could this be a trap he’s set up to take his revenge? Cal peered closer at the mayor, then scanned their surroundings. But it doesn’t look like he’s carrying any weapons on his body, nor can I see anyone hiding in the low brushes around us. Maybe not, then?

Drawing strength from the weapon at his waist, Cal took a deep breath and impulsively walked on, sating his new sense of power that baulked at the idea of showing weakness in front of an enemy he felt he could take. Tense and palming the hilt of his longsword, Cal came within a few paces of the mayor and stopped.

Ovaro gave a small nod, twirling a daisy between his index finger and thumb so that it spun like a windmill in strong winds. “You don’t look too good, champion. Are you sure you can draw your sword when your hands are trembling as much as they are.”

“Shut up,” Cal barked as heat rushed to his head. It suddenly occurred to him he’d never swung a sword, let alone fought with one; Penbrooke had in his body, which Cal had experienced as though it was himself, but an insecurity flashed through his mind that maybe he’d fail where the knight had succeeded. He shortly dismissed these concerns, however.

Sure, I wouldn’t want to take on someone practised like Rory, not without Penbrooke’s spectral powers, but I reckon I can hold my own against Ovaro at least. Alongside this belief came an easing of nerves.

“I’m only jesting; you clearly had one too many a pint yesterday,” the mayor said with a laidback laugh. “No need to be so tense.”

“You’re not here to kill me?” Cal asked, crooking an eyebrow.

“Kill you?” The mayor threw his head back and laughed even harder this time, shaking with disbelief. “Why would I kill the champion of our Fragrant Grove’s first ever tournament? That is a great honour, you know, not a stain to be embarrassed about.”

“…I subverted your rule?”

Ovaro waved the assertion off. “Nonsense. Every now and then you’ve got to let the dogs run around and release steam, that’s all this is. I give it, let’s see,” he counted on his fingers, “three days max before they come crawling back, begging me to take charge again – I mean, who do you think’s been funding the village transformation? Trust me, the flowers will be replanted before the week is up, though maybe not as thoroughly given my populace’s regrettable complaints.”

With this the absent jigsaw piece slotted into place and completed the puzzle of how Ovaro had attained power in the first place. The vision had shown it was a moonshot for him to run for mayor, so Cal had assumed Ovaro must have threatened the populace to win the position in the end, though this explanation had left a sour taste in Cal’s mouth given he’d also never seen Ovaro engage in violence, not even when Simone had jumped him, nor ever show a temperament that relished in the casual use of it (except for when the crowd had not cheered for his flower crown, so maybe that was a moot point).

The notion that Ovaro had bought out the locals made a lot more sense; but where this answered one question, it made another more confounding.

“So why are you here then?” Cal voiced. He cautiously took his hand off the hilt but maintained his wariness just in case.

“Why, because you’re the champion of the tournament, of course. I couldn’t give you your rightful prize due to the circumstances of the time, so here I am now.” He lifted the floral crown from his head and held it out to Cal. “Want it?”

“I’m good.” Although Cal imagined he could sell it for a pretty penny, he feared that if he accepted it, Penbrooke would come out of nowhere, somehow find it, and start wearing it everywhere; the mask alone was bad enough…

Ovaro shrugged. “Can’t help bad taste. But don’t worry, although it’s true that I do find it a bit uncouth, I will still honour your wishes for what you wanted after you won the tournament.”

“Huh?”

“It was reported to me how you specifically requested for a statue of yourself to be put up.” Ovaro cringed a little, but pushed through. “In a pose like this, I’m told.” The mayor flexed his arms to his sides in a muscle pose and put on the clenched grimace of someone who was trying far too hard to act cool and/or really badly needed to empty their bowels but needed to hold it until this important meeting was over; it also just so happened to be one of the poses Penbrooke had shown the administrator girl while signing up for the tournament.

That’s what you meant by relaying my wishes yesterday?! Fuck!

It was obvious that anyone with functioning eyes would find this pose somewhat humiliating, yet the mayor and administrator were swallowing down their distaste in order to carry out Penbrooke’s wishes. I need to stop them. “Oh, there’s no need for that. I was just joking then, aha – I can’t believe you guys fell for that.”

Ovaro cleared his throat, but pointedly did not meet Cal’s gaze. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I was told in great detail about how excited you were demonstrating it, and how Gabbie had to interrupt you in fear the tournament would have started by the time you’d finished showing all your prepared poses.”

Lies! I’m sure Penbrooke would have seen the people staring and eventually stopped… maybe… Lies anyway!

“And don’t worry, I got the guards to describe to the local artist the pose you proclaimed as your favourite one from each of their angles, so we’ll make sure to have it come out exactly how you wanted it.”

Not you guys too! Cal wanted to cry at the idea of his face being on such a cringeworthy statue; the worst wasn’t the locals here either; no, the worst was the fact that news of this tournament would most certainly make its way towards Riversdale, and once there the tale that a Riversdalian local had won Fragrant Grove’s first ever tournament would most certainly make the daily newspaper, and the article describing it would most certainly be accompanied by a drawing of the champion’s statue to show the readers who it was.

I don’t know what’s worse: if the statue shows my bare face, or if it shows me wearing Rudy’s mask.

The mayor looked to chew over something in his mind. “Besides that, seeing as you don’t want the crown I’ll give you something just as valuable; after all, I wouldn’t want anyone accusing me of not showing my champion any love.” Taking something out of his clothes, he chucked it over. “Here, catch.”

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Cal had no intention of catching whatever his potential-enemy had thrown until he saw the glister of gold in the light, at which point he faithfully caught the object in cupped hands. It was a golden brooch the size of a pinkie finger of an anthropomorphic bumblebee sniffing (some may even say snorting) a flower with an elated expression. “Huh?”

The mayor cleared his throat again. “When I first came back home, I naturally went over to the Iron Lady to pay my respects. In truth I was hoping she’d lend me a hand in regaining my position, even willing to give up a painful cut to achieve that. So you can imagine how stunned I was when she told me she was content with her diminished state.”

“…no?” Who is this Iron Lady, and more importantly why is he telling a story unprompted? Don’t tell me he’s reached that age already…

However, Ovaro pretended not to see Cal’s look of befuddlement and continued. “I told her it felt as though she’d pissed down my leg and told me it’s raining, because it was unimaginable to think someone that fearsome would be content with the piddling power she had in that sleepy village, no chance for a woman as tyrannical…”

Is it my mum?

“…and calculated as her.”

Never mind.

“She said she wasn’t taking me for a fool and had answered honestly, so I figured she was restraining herself or something along those lines. Hot-headed, I asked her when she’d care to rid herself of her self-imposed constraints. You can imagi—” He stopped and rephrased his sentence. “I can tell you by this point I believed her weak, and was uncaring if I provoked her anger. But I was wrong.”

“Yes.” Maybe if I act like I know, he’ll get to the point quicker.

Ovaro raised an eyebrow to hear his thoughts, and thereby called his bluff. “Sorry, I just wanted to… actually, forget about it.”

Having reasserted dominance, the mayor nodded, content. “You see, her ambition and skill hadn’t changed one bit; she’d just been biding her time for the birds to come of age and leave the nest. Either way, I saw I wouldn’t be getting any help from her, so I came back here and started rebuilding Fragrant Grove to pass the time. It was out of nowhere I one day I woke with the idea of hosting a tournament, figuring it a good way to rebrand the village. That’s all I had in mind. I certainly didn’t think I’d catch any big flies with this little tournament, and moreover my cynicism from my meeting with her had blinded me so I failed to recognise you until the end, thinking you were just a common country kid.”

“I’d say I’m at least uncommon, maybe even rare.”

Ovaro ignored him. “I know what it’s like to be young and ambitious, so I can guess where you’re off to. That brooch I handed you might come in handy should you get into a spot of trouble while there – the right people ought to recognise it and lend you a hand.” The mayor tipped his floral crown. “Best of luck with your travels, Cal – I’ll be cheering for you from the sidelines.”

The mayor did not dally and set off after saying this, heading down a longer route that’d circle round to Fragrant Grove.

Hungover as he was, Cal didn’t feel in any condition to deduce the hidden meaning behind Ovaro’s words, so he shrugged, placed the brooch in his pocket, and continued on his way, figuring it’d make sense to him sooner or later. Sooner it was for after a few minutes had passed, it dawned on him he’d never told anyone in Fragrant Grove his real name.

His body-tenant had gone around telling everyone his name was Ser Penbrooke, so Cal hadn’t bothered to correct them yesterday, viewing it as an unnecessary effort given he’d be leaving shortly after. The only way the mayor could have known his real name, therefore, was if the mayor had known him before.

So the mayor must have mentioned the whole aside about the Iron Lady because it was someone Cal was connected to. Was it his mum after all? But if you were to call her calculated, you may as well go ahead and call a bull calculated while you’re at it – the charge just did not stick to either beast.

Besides, the reason she’d stopped her exploits was something else entirely. Once when his mum had shared another story of her past exploits, he’d asked why she wasn’t cool like that anymore. Besides pinching his cheeks raw and pulling them apart, daring him to say that again, she’d replied she was too lazy to do stuff like that anymore, only to then get irritated when Cal accepted her answer naturally.

Which left only one other person Ovaro could have been referring to given how he kept implicating it was someone Cal was close to: his Auntie Jane… but she wasn’t cold, tyrannical, or any of that, really.

Sure, she could occasionally get tyrannical when Jessie or Uncle Gil were getting on her nerves… And Cal had heard from others she could be extraordinarily frosty in her position as deputy mayor, to the point it struck fear into people’s hearts… And to be honest, deputy mayor was a diminished position compared to what she was doing before, which she’d never been too clear on but he’d gleaned was some bigwig position near or in the capital…

Okay, it wasn’t looking great for her, but all the same Cal just couldn’t see his lovely aunt as the intimidating figure Ovaro had described, so he logically concluded the mayor must have been referring to someone else. Or at least he did until one final fact occurred to him: his aunt had been friends with his mum for ages, in fact, since their childhood days if he recalled right. That sure was an awfully long time to spend around a bad influence…

----------------------------------------

There was a hesitant knock on the door, answered by a deep, sluggish voice: “Come in.”

The door opened to a dark room so heavily clouded that smoke billowed out akin to the heat blasting from an opened oven; the minion held on to the door frame while it doubled over in a coughing fit. Their boss wasn’t visible in the smoky void of a room, the only sign of his presence being the faintest of lights – a dying firefly – further in that was presumably a lit cigar in the boss’s mouth.

“What is it, minion?” rumbled the boss’s tired voice, followed by a single cough.

“Uh, boss, uhm.” The minion twiddled its toes, wishing someone else would inform the boss instead.

“Hurry up with it, minion. You know I’m a busy devil with an unholy amount of paperwork to get through.” Only the Demon King knew how the boss was able to discern the meaning of any missive in front of him in a room this obscure, or maybe that was the trick to getting through paperwork fast – to sign without caring for the contents.

“Uh, boss, do you remember that small tournament that was taking place in a village in Felsia. No problem if you’ve forgotten because it was inconsequential, honestly.”

“Inconsequential, perhaps, but still good for building a reputation. Yes, I fondly remember how the candidate you showed looked promising.” Humming, the boss dug up details from his memory. “The Black Knight, was it? Not only a top candidate from our screening but also given one of our new and improved armours to use.” The boss whistled and chuckled cruelly. “Boy, I’d have hated to be matched up against that; I wouldn’t be surprised if it ended as a bloodbath. Still, that works to our favour so don’t worry about that.”

Oh Demon King, not only does he remember but he really remembers! The minion made a noise that could be interpreted as an affirmation or denial, then faked a few coughs to give it time to think of how to proceed. “Indeed, the Black Knight was our candidate. He breezed through the competition yesterday as expected, practically a brutal killing machine, really, but then our watchers were stunned when he came upon the most formidable enemy in the finals, someone who claimed to be a hero!”

The boss was silent.

The minion gulped.

For all that looked bad, the good of it was that the boss who’d previously sounded drained and lethargic was now energised as he spoke at a quickened cadence. “The outskirts of Felsia are the very definition of the boonies, minion; in fact, one of the villages there is even called Greenhorn Bastion. Once we’ve won the war and are proceeding to conquer those lands, I don’t expect to lose a single troop there because I don’t expect a single iota of resistance from those backwaters. Which,” the boss paused, breathed in and out, “is why I’m struggling to understand how an ideal candidate you picked, equipped with an armour set possessing the Demon King knows how many modifications, how he lost to some ape-brained hero-pretender over there.”

The boss paused again, this time a more thoughtful type of pause that the minion didn’t like the sound of; it’d have to act quick to save its skin.

“Uh, boss, this hero candidate commanded surprising abilities that our watchers couldn’t make sense of coming from a novice combatant, including efficient mana control and the innate charisma to incite a crowd into a riotous mood. He may be a novice, yes, but his ideology and capabilities portend badly for us.”

Returning from his pause, the boss picked at the most pedantic detail that really didn’t need any examination. “Minion, you did pick a top-quality candidate, right?”

The minion made its ambiguous noise again. “We picked a candidate who was desperate and easily pliable for our purposes, boss.”

“Out of interest, what was his vocation, minion?”

“He was a tradesman of the streets, boss, possessing both high endurance and the resistances of a plaguekin.”

The boss hummed thoughtfully, and spoke in a chillingly soft tone. “Oh right, so like a hawker or a peddler. Because when I hear desperate, minion, I almost think you went and picked a random hobo off the street… but you wouldn’t do that, minion, would you?”

When the minion did not respond, a thunderous bang sounded from a fist slamming against the desk, twin flames firing from the boss nostrils and briefly illuminating a large horned demonkin with blazing eyes and a furious expression.

The minion hugged the door frame for its poor life, and prayed to the Demon King it’d survive this ordeal.

In contrast to his expression, the boss spoke in his sweet tone again. “Why don’t you tell me some good news now, minion?”

“Boss, don’t you worry, we made sure to reclaim the armour set so nothing of value was lost to the humans.”

“Good good.” Jet streams escaped the boss’s nostrils once more. “So you said this was a surprisingly competent hero candidate, right? Well, I want you and the team to prepare a nice surprise for him; since he’s currently in those boonies, the only larger settlement nearby is Cliquee Cove. Make it so our little hero aspirant meets a heroic end there.” Another sticky pause. “And if he doesn’t, minion, I’ll personally see to it to teach you what a heroic end looks like. Capeesh, minion?”

“Understood, boss, I’ll get to it at once. Sorry for disturbing you, boss.” The minion gave a rushed bow and hurried to shut the door on the office before the boss could change his mind. It would immediately have the team assemble promising hero crushers in the area to eliminate this unexpected problem before it grew into a career ender. That said, though, the minion wasn’t interested in being scapegoated again.

Rather, it was better if the only person in the office who could handle the boss returned. Boss, you may hate me for this, but the corporate game makes devils out of all of us. However guilty the minion felt, if it were to keep its skin the minion needed the secretary to return early from her holiday.